#*almost

Every time* Mal and Alina say each-other’s names 

I want to talk for a bit about this official artwork drawn by Kish. Mainly because it is quite detailed given it's a realistic rendering of how Sasuke and Naruto would look at age 16. Well that and they are quite clearly staring at each other. Btw, my boy Naruto is so damn cute, no wonder Sasuke fell in love with him a little bit everytime he saw him as a kid.

Okay so what can you glean from this artwork? The light is falling on them from the same side which means they are facing each other. Their eyeline suggests that the portraits are their POVs of each other, and the magnification suggests they are standing quite close to each other. Their expressions are so interesting to see. Where Naruto looks at Sasuke with this intense but restrained passion and resolve in his eyes; there's a shadow of pain there as well, Sasuke looks at Naruto with a dignified arrogance and poise. He looks a bit expectant. His neck is cocked a bit, like he is throwing Naruto a challenge (so are we really just friends Naruto?). There are a lot of emotions lurking beneath the surface and it makes sense because this art was released in vote 2 chapters, conclusive chapters, where all their feelings came to their resolution.

But what screams out from the frame is the Tension, cut it with a knife if you please.

This is so reminiscent of so many other panels and covers in manga that Kishi has drawn featuring just the two of them. You put those two in the same vicinity and it's like everything else just vanishes. Kishi holds the viewers by their throats and forces them to acknowledge the intensity between the two, the complexity of emotions that he draws so skillfully, the unresolved tension that is drawn over and over again. Which finally gets resolved in chapter 698. When Sasuke smiles at him, laughs with him, calls him affectionately by his exclusive pet name...